good. They would think I was mad. This is the way it would work:--Message:
"Danger! Take care!" Answer: "What danger? Where?" Message: "Don't know.
But for God's sake take care!" They would displace me. What else could they
do?'
His pain of mind was most pitiable to see. It was the mental torture of a
conscientious man, oppressed beyond endurance by an unintelligible
responsibility involving life.
'When it first stood under the Danger-light,' he went on, putting his dark hair back
from his head, and drawing his hands outward across and across his temples in
an extremity of feverish distress, 'why not tell me where that accident was to
happen--if it must happen? Why not tell me how it could be averted--if it could
have been averted? When on its second coming it hid its face, why not tell me
instead: "She is going to die. Let them keep her at home"? If it came, on those
two occasions, only to show me that its warnings were true, and so to prepare me
for the third, why not warn me plainly now? And I, Lord help me! A mere poor
signalman on this solitary station! Why not go to somebody with credit to be
believed, and power to act!'
When I saw him in this state, I saw that for the poor man's sake, as well as for the
public safety, what I had to do for the time was, to compose his mind. Therefore,
setting aside all question of reality or unreality between us, I represented to him
that whoever thoroughly discharged his duty, must do well, and that at least it
was his comfort that he understood his duty, though he did not understand these
confounding Appearances. In this effort I succeeded far better than in the attempt
to reason him out of his conviction. He became calm; the occupations incidental
to his post as the night advanced, began to make larger demands on his
attention; and I left him at two in the morning. I had offered to stay through the
night, but he would not hear of it.
That I more than once looked back at the red light as I ascended the pathway,
that I did not like the red light, and that I should have slept but poorly if my bed
had been under it, I see no reason to conceal. Nor, did I like the two sequences
of the accident and the dead girl. I see no reason to conceal that, either.
But, what ran most in my thoughts was the consideration how ought I to act,
having become the recipient of this disclosure? I had proved the man to be
intelligent, vigilant, painstaking, and exact; but how long might he remain so, in
his state of mind? Though in a subordinate position, still he held a most important
trust, and would I (for instance) like to stake my own life on the chances of his
continuing to execute it with precision?
Unable to overcome a feeling that there would be something treacherous in my
communicating what he had told me, to his superiors in the Company, without
first being plain with himself and proposing a middle course to him, I ultimately
resolved to offer to accompany him (otherwise keeping his secret for the present)
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